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The Slippery Legal Slope of Cartoon Porn
BenFenner writes "Two out of the three Virginia judges involved with Dwight Whorley's case say cartoon images depicting sex acts with children are considered child pornography in the United States. Judge Paul V. Niemeyer noted the PROTECT Act of 2003, clearly states that 'it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists.'"
The act defines a "child" as a "person":
(2) the term âchildâ(TM) means a person who has not attained
the age of 18 years and isâ"
ââ(A) under the perpetratorâ(TM)s care or control; or
ââ(B) at least six years younger than the perpetrator;
Plus as some cartoons are over the age over 18 like the Simpsons for example. They're 20 years old as a point of fact.
does it become illegal? Two stick figure drawings with a caption "10 year olds" would be considered illegal if you didn't pencil in some shorts? Madness.
In Australia, a guy got done for having cartoon porn of the Simpsons.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/simpsons-cartoon-ripoff-is-child-porn-judge-20081208-6tmk.html
Yet another reason for me to leave this backward backwater.
If it's fantasy, you can say the depiction is as old as you want. It's not real, rules of reality don't apply, at all.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
This shit is gonna get sticky fast considering a large portion of hentai has underage characters. How do you define age? How do you define "look" based on art styles? How can you base a conviction and therefore the incarceration of a person based on the definition of the interpretation of a picture?
Based on TFA he's still obviously conducting illegal activity by having REAL child pornography but by including some anime hentai drawings in the ruling they are setting a very dangerous precedent.
So a disclaimer at the bottom that all characters pictured are based off real adults who are merely very young looking would make it safe?
Ok, so if I draw a picture of a person having sex with a sentient machine (non-human like, lets say a 1m cube with a penis sized hole in one side) and that machine is only 10 years old according to the crappy fan-fic I write about it, does that make it child pornography?
Oh wait, I know how to use up more of the courts time, where were those rule 34 pictures of ALF and the simpsons I had laying around...
...
I was under the impression that the reason for child pornography laws was to protect children from exploitation. It may not be possible to prosecute the people abusing children if they are in a foreign country, but you can help to reduce their market by prosecuting the people who buy their products. How, exactly, does society benefit from prosecuting artists who draw cartoons, however tasteless? The money would be better spent going after mimes.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Geez, I've been watching a lot of cutesy Japanese anime for a long time and some of the girls in the ecchi stuff I like appear very very young.
Maybe I should start thinking about whole-disk encryption. :)
So, who exactly is the victim in this case? If none is required then logically everybody involved in production of any work of (questionable) arts depicting killing, assault, robbery or any other crime should be convicted. Too bad over 80% or more of Hollywood and TV production would become illegal.
How about pictures of underage girls with full grown male genitals? How about non-sexual underage vorarephilia? How about underage furry?
How about concentrating police time and effort capturing the REAL pedophiles? Remember? Those that actually DO illegal stuff!
Director of animatrix convicted for 1.class murder of Mr. Anderson
The next stage should be to lower the resolution and bit depth of images that can still be classed as child porn. With luck, we should be able to find these sequences of bytes 'embedded' in software and video streams all over the place and this will provide lots and lots of money for the legal profession.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I believe the last SCOTUS decision found that cartoon porn was protected speech by a 6-3 margin. Here's the relevant link: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-795.ZS.html Another interesting question is why did the Virginia court disregard the SCOTUS decision that I link to above?
TFA states that he was also convicted for obscene e-mails describing sex acts with children. Anybody else find this even more worrying than the pictures?
I guess this means you can commit a felony by posting a few choice lines on slashdot?
(Posting anon since I don't want to be associated with this subject, however remotely)
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
If pedophiles will get in jail whether they are looking at real CP or drawings depicting children, then why would they bother with fiction? I believe this can only bring a higher consumption of real 3D child porn.
When we start trying to apply the laws of the
land to the realm of make believe our justice
system will have officially lost it's mind. . .
Next we'll be appointing a Cartoon Czar. . .
Hopefully they will ban other similar rubbish!
I jerk off to "two girls, one cup" nightly. I find "glass in my ass" to be the pinnacle of art. I mourn the loss of the goatse domain.
That being said, anyone who wants to depict sexual acts being performed on or with someone under the age of 18 is a sick fuck and should be either forced into some kind of mental treatment program or forced out of society (either jail or deportation, take your pick).
You forgot to hit the anon checkbox lol
Child porn is of course the currently "indefensible" crime (the crime that no one can defend), and so of course prosecutors love to prosecute against it. The ironic thing is that they will wind up devaluing child porn if they are not stopped - it can either be a uniquely degrading and evil thing, or it can be squiggles on a piece of paper, but it can't be both at the same time.
(Posting anon since I don't want to be associated with this subject, however remotely)
Now THAT'S funny.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
o><
That's a gay priest fucking an altar boy. Slashdot is conveying ascii child porn, because I labeled it like that.
If it looks like thoughtcrime, someone, somewhere, won't be comfortable enough with themselves to understand the difference between a thought and a real deed. I don't care what your bible says, a sin in the mind is not a sin in deed. And, more important, that's not how laws work. This is cut and dried free-speech and the decision will be struck. Period. Full stop. We've been here before.
Pornography is usually defined in practice, legally, as something that turns on a Judge.
Just saying.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
henti crosses the line all the time. The problem is not the definition, but the results. If these child predators have a facet to fixate on that is legal, they continue to further their addiction.
Make it illegal, to and work with ISP's to block this kind of traffic. I hate censorship, but at some point you have to draw a line. Images of the Japanese school girl being raped by a tentacle demon = bad....
it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists.
That's stupid. Things, objects, people - generally, entities - that don't exist don't have any traits; in particular, they aren't (cannot be!) minors, just like they aren't adults, either, or in fact anything.
To give a car analogy, consider the car I do not actually own and that does not actually stand in the driveway in front of my house. What colour is that car?
It'd make no sense to say that the car is red, obviously. Does that mean the car is another colour? But it isn't blue, either, or green, or yellow, or black, and in fact, the same thing can be said for ANY and EVERY colour. So does that mean that the car is a colour besides red (because it's not red), while at the same time not actually being ANY colour?
All this is obviously rubbish.
Another example? Take the oft-quoted "proof" that god exists that goes like this: "god is perfect; non-existence implies a lack of perfection; therefore, since god is perfect, he cannot NOT exist, therefore he exists". The fatal flaw in this argument is ascribing a trait (perfection) to an entity (god) that a priori doesn't exist (i.e., cannot be assumed to exist): by ascribing the trait of perfection to god, you already ASSUME the existence of god, since otherwise it makes no sense to talk about whether god is perfect.
Saying, in essence, "there is no person involved, and the whole thing's a crime if he/she's underage" equally makes no sense. If there is no person, there is no entity to which traits such as "underage" or "not underage" can meaningfully be ascribed.
Yeah, I know. Browser crash made me do it (safari). Oh, well.
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
The age of consent in most of the US is 16. So, depicting sexual acts being performed on or with someone under the age of 18 makes someone sick, even when actually having sex with that person wouldn't?
Supposing they found someone with a set of convincing looking child photos on their hard drive. They look realistic but the owner says they had been created within PhotoShop ( or Gimp or whatever ), and no children were harmed. They may have created the image, or they may have filtered the image in PhotoShop to remove any digital signatures from the camera that took the image. Okay, Solomon, how do we settle this one?
Well, there is a legal precedent. Hans Van Meegren, a Dutchman, was accused of selling Old Master paintings to the Nazi occupiers. He argued that the paintings he supplied were fakes. To prove this, he had to produce a convincing painting in court that would have passed for a Vermeer. And he did. Actually, his fakes were not technically accurate - he used things like zinc white instead of the lead white that Vermeer would have used, so the court could have decided on forensic evidence. However, as his recreation of the techniques of Old Masters was better than most other of his age - Tom Keating could have taught him a thing or two - the court required the proof of his talent.
Of course, if you bought some of these images, then we cannot know whether you thought they were real or no. We assume the Nazis thought the Vermeers were real. It seems reasonable to assume any collector of such images thought they were real if they look convincing enough, in the lack of other evidence.
I don't think the aim is to criminalize cartoons which clearly have no human originals, though doubtless there will be factions that will want to apply them that way. If you draw anime images of under-age sex or collect Star Trek homoerotica then people such as I might not want to shake your hand, but we will fight for your rights to do so.
I'm reporting this thread immediately to the DOJ. You are all clearly trying to find loopholes around this important legislation that is vital to protect our cartoons and adults dressed as children.
Yeah! Fjan11 = child molester. Grab the torches! Let's kill the bastard.
So that will be Steven King, with the child sex scene near the end of 'It', in jail then?
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
You may have said that tongue in cheek, but it would be more likely to be something they found offensive against the perceived values of the culture they judge within.
no comment
could happen differently. it's all in the manual. better days ahead. see you there?
Rule 34 on the Supreme Court.
...thinking about having sex with Children. And then writing about thinking about having sex with Children. Ooops. I'm in trouble.
Lucky for Nabokov he's dead, or he'd be jailed for writing Lolita...
It should be noted that any fictitious depiction of a child engaged in sex or being sexually presented in is being threatened here. The remake of Lolita, where digital effects are used to create a naked underaged girl, scenes from the professional where leon glimpses mathilda who is trying to be sexy for him, pictures of your of age girlfriend if she looks underage...
Stick figures... Cartoon puppies... pictures of yourself naked as a child being molested by your adult self... The text describing ones own sexual experiences as a minor... Where does it stop? With a judge saying 'I cant define it, but I know it when I see it?'
These judges should have tossed out the virtual child porn, and the text, and convicted him on the actual child porn and other laws that may have been broken. These judges are traitors to common sense and freedom of expression. Off with their heads!
The claim made by many is that children may find these pictures, or that these images/texts find their way into the hands of pedophiles who would molest/rape children... It's all bullshit. Many adult things will fall into the hands of children and those things in general arent going to screw them up for life. Kids have seen lemonpart/goatse/2girls1cup/manga and are just fine. Will one of them see something and their brains shatter? Sure. But this more often happens when some fucktard introduces them to religion. Will pedophiles find this material and spank it to it? Sure. But using that kinda logic to ban it we need to ban everything that works along those lines... Ban porn because it makes some adults rape other adults. Ban alcohol because some drunks drink, drive, kill.
In the end... Virtual child porn doesnt involve any actual children, unless of course it was drawn by a child... What kid didnt draw huge ass titties on stick figures, of if they had talent just draw naked women?... But there is no victim here, except the victim who is offended by anothers artistic expression? That's just life kids...
In some countries, Australia, it is illegal to have virtual child abuse pictures or video. A man is facing jail time for posting a video of a russian circus child being tossed and swung in the air... Even tho the child is laughing the entire time the Australian courts are wanting to send a guy to jail for just linking to the video.
It might be time to rip the sticks out of ppls asses and beat them to death with them.
The crime is in committing an injustice against a child.
Many people have fantasies that they would never carry out.
Ever fantasize about killing your boss, or ex?
But you can watch movies with such scripting, its not illegal to fantasize.
Without reading the details of this guys previous history that put him on parole to begin with, I'd imagine that having such cartoons and anime are really not direct evidence of his breaking parole but supporting evidence of the direction of his mental state and concern for real children he may come into contact with. Out of sight, out of mind is perhaps conditions of his parole?
The idea of Japanese anime depicting child porn is perhaps interesting as there seem to be laws that Japanese porn, real or anime, are restricted in what all is allowed to be shown. Certainly these restrictions are more strict than what restrictions against child porn would be and as such inherently include restrictions against child porn.
Perhaps they should be busting those who produce child porn anime as it does seem there are laws against it even in the country its produced in.
For repeated and multiple murder, for torture, both physical and psychological, for cannibalism and for a few other things that I'd have to consult my library for and reread some of his work.
And while we're at it, I also ask to have the governor of California arrested for ... well, pretty much the same crimes.
No, they didn't commit them. They only depicted and acted them. But appearantly that difference is no longer important.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
was that its manufacture directly hurt children (the ones portrayed in it, not some abstract concept). While distasteful, virtual "child" porn, no matter how realistic, seems to be a freedom of speech which is protected under the Constitution. Otherwise, you are creating a thoughtcrime.
Also is the matter of arguing "age". Some are undeniably children, but we live in a country where 18 years old prosecuted for statutory rape of 16 years old isn't unheard of in our recent histroy. Do we really want to relegate to the prosecutors this power?
Also consider the common cartoon/anime characteristic of having an adult in mind in an essentially child like body. What then?
In summary:
-lack of victim
-Freedom of Speech, if only popular speech were to be protected, we wouln't need 1st amendment
-age ambiguities
So if pictures can depict real things...
Does this mean we can just pay off any fines by drawing large sums of money (or just sacks with $$'s on them, would be easier).
Finally, we'll be able to pay all of those software people and musicians the 'lost' money they are owed by those pirates!
End the economic crisis.
End world hunger.
It's all in our reach!!
The really offensive thing about this decision is that it crosses the line from punishing real world actions to punishing pure thought.
Now compare that with advances in PET and other brain scan technology that someday in the near future may be able to detect your thoughts externally.
If that isn't a Orwellian 1984 vision I don't know that would be.
Someone really really needs to write the cartoon simpsons virus installer.
1) The law in question was passed after the SCOTUS ruling. The judges may be thinking that the law was crafted intentionally to avoid infringing on that ruling.
2) The judges may be be hinting to the current supreme court that the 2002 ruling should be revisited. The judges may know good and well that their particular ruling may be overturned, they may just be hoping that the current Supreme Court will narrow the "if there's no real kid in the picture, it's legal" blanket exemption.
Personally, I suspect that #1 is the "cover" reason and #2 is the "real" reason. Why? Human nature.
I hope the circuit court takes this up en blanc and either reverses the 3-judge panel in favor of the 2002 Supreme Court ruling, or gives a point-by-point legal argument to the Supreme Court detailing exactly why the 2002 ruling either does not apply in this case or was itself wrong as it applies to this case and and why it should be refined to exempt cases like this one.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
> REAL pedophiles? Remember? Those that actually DO illegal stuff!
But it IS illegal stuff; the court has spoken.
That's why it is vitally important your cartoons depict 200-year-old VAMPIRE children -- then you'll be safe.
(Posting anon since I don't want to be associated with this subject, however remotely)
Look everybody, Fjan11 speaks about child porn!
"I was under the impression that the reason for child pornography laws was to protect children from exploitation."
That may have been the original intention when the first child pornography law was created (I believe that was in 1977), but those who now scream "think of the children!" are not really thinking of the children at all.
Child pornography is an emotional topic, so it is very easy to use the issue for political reasons. Campaigning for laws against issues which cause moral outrage are an easy way for a politician to raise his profile and/or attract support. Each campaigner has to find something slightly different to campaign for, so it's not surprising that someone eventually chose virtual child porn.
Of course, laws against child pornography are also a great way to justify intrusive and restrictive laws. Child porn (among other issues, such as terrorism) was used to justify Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (UK), which forces a person to provide any encryption keys which they know of, under penalty of imprisonment.
Laws against child pornography are an easy route to power, so it is not surprising that politicians use them regardless of the consequences to children and ethical paedophiles.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
Dear Timothy:
Please don't use Slippery and Porn in a headline together. Ohhh, my head, it burns!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Remember that the film "Kids" was filmed with actors who were not minors... but they depict minors doing not-so-minorly things. The film may have received an NC-17 rating for its sexual content, but just because the actors LOOK below the age of consent did not make the film fall into the category of 'child pornography.'
So, it's already been determined in the courts so long as the actors of pornography/sex scenes are of the age of consent, it does not constitute child pornography because the person the doing the act, or having the act done unto them, is of the age of consent. How in the holy hell can this apply to cartoons? I don't recall fictitious characters created in the world of imagination having any legal protections other than copyrights.
What a bloody grand time to be a lawyer in our litigation-minded society.
The serious problem with any witch-hunt - we'll take paedophilia as an example, because it's the current one - is that banning speech about an issue prevents rational discussion of that issue.
When Charles Dickens was concerned about the condition of children in Victorian London, he wrote novels about it. When Robert Burns wanted to express his opposition to slavery, he wrote poems about it. The novels and poems reached a far wider audience and ultimately affected political change far more effectively than dry factual accounts.
I'm not arguing that paedophilia is acceptable. It's clearly an abuse of power for adults to prey on non adults. But the boundaries of that condition do have to be explored: why is the age of consent for heterosexual sex in Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Israel and parts of Germany 14, in Denmark, Iceland, France and Greece 15, in Finland and most of the United Kingdom 16, in Northern Ireland 17? Why, in the United States, is sex legal at the age of 14 in many conservative mid-west states, but illegal until 18 in liberal California?
There's also a concept in many parts of the world that sex between two people of roughly the same age is allowable able at a considerably younger age than sex between a young person and a significantly older person - and that seems to me entirely reasonable.
But so long as there is a witch-hunt in progress we can't have rational discourse about these things. We certainly can't use fiction to explore the issues. Could Nabokov's Lolita even be published today? This is in the end a civil liberties argument - not because children don't need protecting, of course children need protecting. But so does freedom of speech.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Would you like to know that this guy is walking the streets where your children are? He is clearly a fucking scumbag and a previously convicted sex offender. I applaud the judge for using whatever he can to keep shit like this off the streets.
Jan Maurits Faber
Laan der Hesperiden 156
Amsterdam, 1076DX, NLD
Now we have a name an address for this pedo scum. Repost these details on the internet, anywhere. Let's take another pedo scum DOWN!
If you're an oldster or a lawyer of the sort who can quote Dost, this may be sad but it isn't surprising.
For you young 'uns out there, listen up for a history lesson.
For a very long time in the U.S., child porn was legal. Admittedly, this point can be argued. Some say it was always illegal because it was always obscene. However, it wasn't prosecuted because the possibility existed that it could be produced in a way that was not obscene. Whether it was technically legal or illegal isn't important. The practical matter is that it wasn't prosecuted, wasn't specifically prohibited, and was easily available to anyone who wanted to send off a money order or walk into a big city adult book store.
IN the mid 1970s, the first laws were passed that said it was illegal. First amendment concerns surfaced but those were beaten back with the argument that producing it required that a crime be committed by an adult against a child. You couldn't produce child porn without actually raping a child. By the early 1980s, it was pretty much illegal everywhere in the U.S., though simple possession didn't get outlawed everywhere, uniformly until then. Even now, there have been major nations that didn't outlaw simple possession until recently. Simple possession didn't become illegal in Brazil, for example, until this year.
The U.S., though, was a different case. By the mid to late 1980s, the stuff had been mostly stamped out. In fact, immediately before the rise of the ubiquitous home internet connection, nearly all child porn sold in the U.S. was actually sold by the United States Postal Service as a part of sting operations.
In some of the early court decisions, the first amendment concerns were dismissed with the explicit allowance that depictions of underage sex for artistic purposes could continue unhindered as long as the actors involved were of age. At the time, the example often cited was "The Last Picture Show."
Since then, things have gradually changed from the sensible to the insane. The changes have been far too many and too complex to outline here and each change has been rather gradual. As the law now stands (IANAL, etc.) literally any picture of a child can be considered porn if a prosecutor can convince a jury that it was produced or possessed for prurient purposes. Nudity is not required. Sexual activity is not required. Prosecutors are willing to proceed on the flimsiest basis when motivated by stupidity or politics, sometimes successfully (the Pierson case, as a lead-in to prosecuting WebeWeb), sometimes unsuccessfully (as in the attempt in Oklahoma to criminalize the highly regarded movie "The Tin Drum.")
I'm not a big fan of Paul Little (the few minutes I've spent with him on several occasions convinced me that he's an ultimately harmless boor) but he should not be looking at jail time. Yet in this (U.S.) society, all rationality has flown right out the window where this subject is concerned.
Here are my two main points (and, incidentally, this is why I know so much about the subject):
1. If you value civil liberties, you need to know about child porn. It's the boogey man, just like "commies" back in the 1950s, that is used as an excuse to build freedom-destroying infrastructure into our laws and communications systems.
2. The original definition of child porn that justified outlawing it included one central tenet - that producing it requires adults to rape children. Nowadays, a large (probably the overwhelming majority) of child porn is produced by children for the consumption of children and there are no adults involved at any stage. If you have a 12-year-old with a web cam in their room or a digital camera built into their cell phone, there is a much-larger-than-you'd-like-to-admit possibility that you're providing a home for a child porn production studio.
Combine those two things and we're looking at a situation where child porn can be used to criminalize a huge portion of the populace. Forgive me for drawing parallels where
I mean, just looking through all of 4chan yields some great pedro pr0n. My favorite was one I found about 6 months ago and then lost, a picture of Dr. Girlfriend made it on there and the panties were dislodged to expose a giant 8-inch coxsickle.
I'm now declaring that every child character in any cartoon series is actually an adult with a rare disease that keeps them in a child state. They're all over 18.
PROBLEM SOLVED.
It's a bad summary.
The opinion makes it clear that the child pornography charges were related to the actual child porn he received, while his convictions related to the anime and emails were obscenity convictions. This is an important distinction.
In Miller v. California, the United States Supreme Court held that the First Amendment did not protect obscene speech, and that such speech could be banned by the government. However, the test for whether speech is obscene is so broad that very little pornography is subject to regulation. According to Wikipedia (since I'm too lazy to look it up on Findlaw), the three prongs of the test are:
* Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
* Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law,
* Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. (This is also known as the (S)LAPS test- [Serious] Literary, Artistic, Political, Scientific).
If each if these prongs is met, then the work is obscene and may be banned.
In contrast, in Ferber v. New York, the Supreme Court held that child pornography is never protected by the First Amendment, regardless of whether it is obscene. The rationale being that the government has a compelling interest in preventing the sexual exploitation of children, and that by its nature child pornography causes injury to the children involved in its production.
So, in brief: child porn involving actual children--always illegal because actual children are injured in the process. Images and stories of children having sex--illegal if obscene. Whorely was convicted under an obscenity statute, rather than a child pornography statute.
--AC
Witch Hunt.
Pedophilia and child pornography are morally reprehensible to most people, not to mention damaging to those exploited in its production. It's also worth pointing out that COPA and PROTECT are two prime examples of how our system of government fails to do what it set out to achieve.
COPA basically stated (among other things) that your first amendment right to free speech was null and void when the content of that speech was fictional child pornography. The supreme court ruled COPA unconstitutional, and rightly so, due to the fact that COPA very specifically abridged free speech; something the first amendment very specifically states Congress does not have the power to do.
Due to the fact that Congress's fast one wasn't able to slip by the Supreme Court (whose job is to filter out this bullshit), they changed a couple of words and relabeled COPA as the PROTECT act. PROTECT, like its predecessor, also abridges free speech by again making fictional work, which is deemed morally reprehensible by the majority of voters who reelected the folks who pushed the bill through----er, wait a minute...
This is the most prime example I have borne witness to of flagrant abuse of power by the Congress in my life:
1. Congress passes law.
2. Supreme court says "wait just a fuckin' minute"
3. Congress changes wording on law, renames and repasses it, while supreme court bickers over previous law.
4. ????
5. Congressman Asshole wins reelection for being "Tough on Crime." (also known in politics as "Profit")
As long as anything is morally reprehensible enough, Congress can throw the bill of rights out the window to enforce their agenda while the flak takes years to tear its way through the judicial system only to finally be struck down by one court or another.
Just goes to show that politics really can be a system that clogs down on its own bullshit as long as there's enough of a popular opinion in the first place to ramrod the shit past its initial threshold.
"I guess this means you can commit a felony by posting a few choice lines on slashdot?"
You don't even have to post them. It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the slashdot comment actually exists.
We're all in trouble now because we are actively thinking about child porn. We should just turn ourselves in.
This guy Dworley isn't exactly deserving of admiration, but.. this law and its interpretation are both insane !!!!
It's really "thoughtcrime" at its worst... I think the creators of the law wanted some easy way to jail people they don't like - that's the justification they use over here, that they are giving "tools" for the police to catch the real offenders and that they wouldn't use it on innocent people... suuure...
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Since God is the attributed author of the Bible, I think we should prosecute god!
Since Abraham strapped his son to an altar and was in the process of performing ritual sacrifice on him. Or that naked Moses, that's offensive. God only knows what those three "wise" men really wanted with a swaddling clad Jesus and his virgin (and underage I might add) mother.
If we're going to get the religious right nutters involved, we might as well get the completely involved!
The problem is some people really believe that if you take in certain pieces of information, you WILL act on it
You have no choice, it's not a question of self-control; sooner or later, you will do something.
(Strangely enough, these kind of people usually talk big about "personal responsibility"... although it's usually in terms of punishment, rarely in terms of prevention.)
The fact that you deny it will happen is proof that you've been corrupted, your conscience seared, and reinforces their belief in their own rightness.
That consuming that information might actually prevent someone from going out and committing the act depicted/described, is something entirely alien, and will cause them to redouble their belief against it.
Whether it's porn of any type, birth control, evolution, video games, political theories,,, hell, damned near anything, someone with this mode of thought will crusade against it. And again, trying to cure them of it only makes them dig in deeper.
Of course, the inquisitors, err... special investigators, are somehow immune to this effect, and are there to save you from your sins.
-Lack of victim
Irrelevant for the legislators because they're not protecting victims. They're trying to punish deviant sexual behavior.
-Freedom of speech
They think punishing deviant sexual behavior is more important than freedom of speech or even logical consistency. You should see what funny arguments they throw at you when you argue their points. Stuff like: "even if virtual child porn actually decreases sexual crime against children that doesn't mean we should allow it" and "children have an inherent natural right to be protected from pornographic depictions of them".
-Age ambiguities
That's just a bonus for the puritans. A gray area allows them to restrict the available "legal" porn as one is forced to go for "older" looking stuff to stay on the safe side.
Yeah, partly because of that. Cartoon CP shows the other reason. It is illegal because it is immoral. Morality isn't rational and it is easy for the lawmakers to cater to emotions of voters.
Think of the (nonexistant) children!
I wonder where this idiocy will end. It's probably being pushed by the same people who want to make it a crime to burn the US flag. Ask them if it's OK to burn a picture of a US flag, or something that looks like a US flag but is one or two stars short, and they start to look at you with that same lost, betrayed expression a dog gets when you pretend to throw the ball, but hide it behind your back.
These assholes are a lot more dangerous to society than the occasional pervert who gets off on drawing dirty pictures.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
So, the problem is, the character depicted "looks" like a minor. So, does this prevent Gary Coleman from doing porn, because he looks underage?
interactive hologram, or it didn't happen.
What if I cut and paste a child's face onto Jenna Jameson's nude body?
Or in order to avoid using a real child .. if i draw a child like face and stick it onto Ron Jeremy's naked body?
Are either of these crimes in the US?
Not only is this impossible to enforce, and filled with loopholes, but it's also rediculous, the whole point of these laws is to protect real children. Unless you want to start protecting the rights of the people getting killed in video games, this is just as stupid.
Next up, people owning ornate garden fountains are now being arrested en-masse.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
I've never understood why those two camps don't join forces. I'm in both (I'm pro-free speech and pro-gun rights) but I find very few people who are like me. I've spent a lot of time talking to porn producers and they tend to think of gun owners as a bunch of rednecks that they don't want to associate with. My gun owning friends tend to think of porn producers as sleazy, Godless pervs that they don't want to associate with. Both groups seem to dislike each other intensely on a personal basis.
Both groups are fighting for freedom. They really ought to get together. They have far more in common than they realize.
Of course, you don't the Witch Trials were 300 years ago!
Some of those burned alive really were witches!
Oh sure, they didn't have eerie powers of the dead or anything but they did practice witch craft.
Point is, times are going to get economically hard for all of us and we will want to see some public executions to ease our pain.
Who better to publicly draw and quarter than the dreaded pedophile!
So what if a few innocents are killed?
God Bless America!
Repeating history for 400 years.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
Too bad you didn't post anon Fjan11!! Who has UID 649654
oogly boogly!
It's not CP if the judge isn't aroused by it.
But... the future refused to change.
A huge crushing effect on art and literature is taking place with these idiotic prosecutions. Usually the drawings do not depict children at all. This applies to Japanese cartoon characters in particular as line drawings of cartoon characters never have genital hair as it is a cultural taboo in Japan. That turns into American eyes believing that the character is pre-puberty in age. In reality the cartoons represent adults.
Further suppose that you collect foreign cartoons which many Americans actually do. Buying items in bulk in foreign languages gives one no way to know what is depicted or described and the moment it hits your hand in the mail idiotic police may sweep one up.
Now museums and others must live in terror that a significant artists works just might be seen by some idiot as child pornography and there is a great chilling effect upon legitimate art and artists. We need to make these stupid child porn laws a crime against freedom. They reach out and molest legitimate art, art collectors, investors and even museums.
...was that its manufacture directly hurt children (the ones portrayed in it, not some abstract concept).
Scope creep or slippery slope, depends on how you look at it. Thew NEW argument is that simulated child porn can possibly be used to entice children into making actual child porn through desensitization or just plain old persuasiveness.
Next thing you know, they are going to ban toastmasters.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Well played, just wait... There is a reason for rule 34.
So they are saying in essence that we should criminalize any product or expression which may contribute to a pattern of behavior which could lead to committing a crime?
ie: those who make hentai with child-like characters are contributing to the obsessions of a mentally ill person who is or could become a pedophile or who may additionally be contributing support (financially or otherwise) to an industry which exploits children.
In the first case you have a mentally ill person who will grab ahold of whatever is available to stimulate their fantasies (kids clothing magazines, etc) and need to be identified and treated or incarcerated.
In the second case, you are talking about a 3rd hand contributory scenario which is a laughable connection at best. Again, it is the mentally ill person who is being taken advantage of and exploited by said industry (in addition to the children of course). The connection to the hentai producer is no better than to any number of other possible stimulating products (kids clothing magazine, etc).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Im going to guess the emails fell under his parole violation. Granted I don't think it's right that he could be convicted for that, but it's how they convicted him for it.... probably.
Does this signal the end for 30 year olds dressed up as schoolgirls as well because it represents the same idea?
You must be some kind of cretin.
Let me give you an alternative solution: that you take your overbroad, puritanical, retarded and completely inappropriate laws, and you shove them up your arse.
And meanwhile, while you sort out your inability to relate to humanity and follow the march of technology, that the kids be left free to lead their normal lives, which includes sex and taking pictures.
It's *you* who has the problem. The kids don't have one.
The problem with child porn, and what makes it illegal is the kids being abused, not the freak adults who like to see them. I mean, you can not be imprisioned or even judged for what you like or what you intend to do. Am I wrong?
Nobody is hurt by drawing (except if you use a very sharp pencil maybe..).
In the book "It" there is a passage where the young Beverly character has sex with all of the young boys in her circle of friends. The scene is graphically described in detail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority
The CCA had no legal power, but there was enough economic pressure to make it a de-facto authority.
If it is a cartoon, or drawing, or created image than there is no crime in my opinion - because there is no victimization.
As reprehensible as child porn and everything that goes along with it is, criminalizing a drawing or something that is created as a work of art (and lets face it, art is in the eye and mind of the beholder, you cannot define art for other people) is basically creating "thoughtcrime."
It truly is a slippery slope to outlaw something like this, and people who think "well, this doesn't affect me and I am all for criminalizing this sort of stuff because anyone who would create such a thing is disgusting" are missing the point. I can't imagine anybody truly wanting the state deciding what you are allowed to think about, write about, draw, or create - there are so many unintended consequences here, and if they can outlaw what can be drawn, then there could be a time in the future that thinking or discussing something is illegal...
It just isn't right, it's not something that a "free country" should do. Look at what is happening in Australia as a perfect example of a government out of control with censorship and information control.
With this Whorley case this guy also had genuine child porn - charge him with that, but as for having Hentai/Manga? Leave it alone.
Who can be sure these stick figures are really over 18 ?
http://xkcd.com/487/
Is this article "News for Nerds", or "Stuff that matters?"
Hmmm....
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
This is a bad law. Not that I like child cartoon porn or any other child porn, but the whole reason that child porn is outlawed (and not a valid form of free speech) is that children are harmed in the making of it. I would rather see these people looking at cartoon porn to get their jollies than to make that illegal too. Because then they have to break the law either way so they think, "may as well use real kids". This makes drawing kids having sex just as bad as forcing them to have sex in real life. That blurs the line between fantasy and reality for criminals and makes them more likely to cross it. These lawmakers seem to think that stopping the fantasy will stop the act, but you can't stop the fantasy for these people, so they figure they've already broken the law by fantasizing, so why not commit the act as well. They will get punished the same way, and the act is more likely to satisfy them. This is another case where they are creating laws just to punish certain criminals and not to create a deterrent which is what laws should be for. That's like creating rules in your home for your kids just so you can punish them. They don't learn from the punishment if they get punished no matter what.
And the rest of the world has a word for that - KIDNAP.
Now, if only our goverment had the 'nads to back up the laws on that...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
This is becoming a truly scary society. This is the beginning of the end of 'freedom' as our fathers thought and fought for. Let me tell you an example of what will be next in few years. You won't be allowed to cook your food at home, you know why? because you are not able to cook properly, you are not a trained chef, you could hurt your health and make taxpayers pay for your future disease due to extra fat or whatever you like to cook. This can be very real. You will only have state delivered and packaged meals. And I tell you one thing, I am ready to fight to death against this transformation. mrn
I would expect that if this case hits the SCOTUS, we will see exactly the same result. From the Opinion:
"Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. O'Connor, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Scalia, J., joined as to Part II. Rehnquist, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, J., joined except for the paragraph discussing legislative history."
I notice the names of the justices who overturned the original statute, and note further that all of them are still on the Court. Two of the three dissenting justices have subsequently been replaced due to death or retirement.
Actually, since it would be just a rehash of the previous case, it is quite possible that Chief Justice Roberts would join in with the "overturn it" bloc. He is a huge fan of Stare Decisis and doesn't like overturning previous decisions.
It's actually possible that the decision would be unanimous, though that may be a stretch. I'd doubt Antonin Scalia would change his position from the previous case.
The argument usually used here is similar to that used against video game violence. That by exposing one to simulated actions (be it violence or sexual situations involving a minor), that it somehow "corrupts" one making them more likely to go out and commit the action in reality.
It's equally stupid in both cases, but there is no shortage of nutjobs willing to lay down their beliefs in the form of law.
BTW, your bringing up of thoughtcrime isn't the red flag to them that it is to us here. I'd wager money that there are many out there who, if they physical devices existed to allow detection of it, would push for laws for anyone who simply became aroused by looking at anyone under the age of 18, regardless of any further action ever taking place.
I've come to the conclusion lately that a significant portion of the population is just crazy (or rather, completely fascist and oppressive idiots is a better description. Crazy suffices most of the time though).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
So if I go into the Metropolitan Museum in NY and look at The Madonna and Child by Raphael, am I a criminal? lol thought crimes.
Unless and until someone can demonstrate, with fMRI scans or similar, that people like Dwight Whorley are completely lacking any conscious volition with respect to this behavior, I see no reason at all to be lenient with such a person. Even then I'm not sure leniency is appropriate.
With respect to the cartoon-versus-photograph argument, again an fMRI scan might settle the issue if it can be demonstrated that the erotic cartoons stimulate activity in exactly the same brain region(s) as do the photographs (I suspect that in fact they do). Up to this point we've merely assumed that is the case and used it as justification for things like the Protect Act.
I knew as soon as I saw this discussion you guys from annabelleigh.net would be out in force. I asked you last time we had a discussion how you could claim that most paedophiles don't really want to have sex with children and you didn't respond.
The reality is that you're deluding yourself and the fact that you're attempting to publicly justify your delusion in this manner is more than a little sad. Straight people download porn about having sex with adults of the opposite sex then they go out and do it, or at least attempt it; the same can be said of gay people with the caveat that it's adults of the same sex.
Why would paedophiles view images (real or simulated) and then not want to have sex with children?
I saw your post above where you cherry picked some studies that failed to show a link between viewing images and desire to have sex with children but we all know that if you just limit yourself to a few studies you can prove any point. The broad experience of just about everyone on the planet is that we view pornography that shows us our fantasy, i.e. things we'd really like to do (if only we had the pulling power).
Rather than try to depict yourself as the victim of politicians playing some power game with your fantasies, isn't it really the case that sex with children (real or imagined) is all about power? How can it be about anything other than a power fantasy where you place yourself above somebody who doesn't have the physical or mental capacity to defend themselves?
Even if you limit yourself to virtual images of children I find it very weird that you'd come out in public and defend what's essentially a rape fantasy.
Nick
The underlying problem that is worrying many, I believe, is that as technology advances it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish between real photographs and cartoons. They're be indistinguishable. This goes in both directions, in making real images look like cartoons, and in making cartoons that look like real photographs. While there might still be ways to forensically determine if an image is computer generated, this won't hold true for long, and I'm sure is already impossible to distinguish images produced cleanly enough.
I'm really out of ideas of what you can do about this. It sounds like a bad idea, a clearing house where images can be signed off as being legitimately computer generated would be workable solution. The clearing house would audit cartoon/animation and porn studios and determine that they are not, in fact, photographing children. Approved images would be given a verified digital signature. The clearing house would have to be impartial to the content of the images and only make their determinations based on the production of the image, as to the question of being produced by photographing a minor.
It would have to be clear that images lacking these signatures would NOT be automatically illegal, but that by having the signature the image could be immediately deduced as being approved by said clearing-house. Images not signed, and including potentially illicit content, would have to be individually reviewed and verified as must be done today.
The obvious danger of all of this is that corruption would hit the clearing house, that bribes would become the standard or, worse, that they succumb to political pressures to deny signatures for legal content. Further down the slippery slope would be the risk that it would become a legal requirement to be signed by this authority, or that there would be too much a stigma by not working within such a voluntary system.
Again, I think the best thing here would be for this to be a voluntary, non-governmental system, like as the rating systems are designed for video games and music...
by Anonymous Coward on 10:41 29th December, 2008 (#26258803)
FAIL
The Daily Show's "America (the book)" has a 2 page spread that depicts the Supreme Court of the time completely nude. It's eye-burningly hideous, but it's there if you really want Rule 34 on SCOTUS.
Kes from Star Trek: Voyager is about 3 years old (her species lives to the ripe old age of 9), but is obviously sexually mature (she's played by a 21 year old actress) and through about one third of her natural life span (so about 25 for a human being).
Is fan fic porn involving her child pornography? This character does not exist either and is quite obviously far far far below the age of concent.
At the other extreme we have Elves from various roleplaying mythologies. In these they are usually considered adolescents/teenagers at the tender age of 70, and 75 is usually the "norm" set to be equal to an 18 year old human. Would fanfic porn involving a 50 year old elf not be child pornography?
We can't really judge by age when it comes to "non humans". Obviously The Simpsons are humanoid, but they're not really humans. But the Simpsons porn involving the kids ... is that really child pornography? I think it depends on your definition of pornography. Personally I've seen some of these animations about a decade ago (along with a ton of Disney related toons), and I wouldn't really consider it porn. It's humour. Twisted, but humour
The big question is: does pornography heighten sexual urges (like an addiction), or satisfy them? If the former, then virtual child pornography might incite a pedophile into seeking out real child pornography or even lead them into child molestation. If the latter, then virtual child pornography can prevent them from taking more drastic action. Someone really needs to do some research and find the answer to this question before we make laws about cartoon child pornography. It's fairly likely that the answer to the question varies from person to person (just as some people can drink casually while others become alcoholics), in which case it would be nice to have some sort of test to see what kind of person any particular pedophile is, for their own benefit.
No one is responsible for whom or what they're sexually attracted to, and that includes pedophiles, necrophiliacs, bestiality fans, etc; they are responsible for controlling those urges when they are inappropriate. That said, people with socially unacceptable fetishes should be treated with sympathy and provided the support they need to control and channel their sexual energy. Painting them as Satanspawn only isolates them, forcing them to find their own ways to cope. If there's a way for people to satisfy their urges without exploiting other people, than that is to everyone's benefit. We should all be lauding the rise of virtual pornography, not condemning it.
No flamebait intended (some hyperbole ahead), but parents are idiots when it comes to their kids, and often kids in general. They will abandon the pursuits and benefits of a free society to "protect the children" at all costs. The problem is nowadays they don't actually know what the real threat is and so they are ripe to be manipulated.
There is nothing wrong with the protective emotion in that nature has selected people with this tendency to survive, as this emotional/instinctive reaction was probably exactly what was needed to actually "protect the children" from an attacking tribe. It's the emotion that causes you to cast aside your fears when something real is attacking but it's now being used to fuel fear of an unknown enemy.
We need to balance our emotional response. Children need protection from real threats. Looking at the child abuse stats from 2006 (most recent on the USDHHS site) only 10% of all child abusers are non-parental (and half of that 10% are relatives, with almost half of what's left after that foster parents/relatives).
If we stick with sexual abuse statistics, parents and relatives still account for 60% of that, with friends, neighbors, daycare providers and other professionals making up 10%. Under 25% of sexual abuse is "other", which I guess is your classic "child predator" that we hear about on the news. I was always lead to believe that parents never hurt their children and we really need to pass laws against the people "out there" who are stalking our kids. The enemy is in the home already.
A purely emotional reaction ignores these facts and might put resources in the wrong places than it would really be needed to help more of the kids getting abused.
Looking at this case, it's almost certain that the same result will occur if this case goes before the Supremes. The issues are almost identical, and they already ruled that only material made with "real" minors can be prohibited. It's settled precident.
The court *explicitly* ruled in regard to "simulated" material:
"In these cases, the defendant can demonstrate no children were harmed in producing the images, yet the affirmative defense would not bar the prosecution. For this reason, the affirmative defense cannot save the statute, for it leaves unprotected a substantial amount of speech not tied to the Government's interest in distinguishing images produced using real children from virtual ones....
"Finally, the Government says that the possibility of producing images by using computer imaging makes it very difficult for it to prosecute those who produce pornography by using real children. Experts, we are told, may have difficulty in saying whether the pictures were made by using real children or by using computer imaging. The necessary solution, the argument runs, is to prohibit both kinds of images. The argument, in essence, is that protected speech may be banned as a means to ban unprotected speech. This analysis turns the First Amendment upside down."
The Supreme Court does not like having its decisions ignored, and the cartoons and writings cover ground that the same justices who wrote the original decision would be re-hearing. Every justice who voted for overturning COPA is still on the bench.
The same arguments that didn't fly in 2002 still won't fly in 2009. I'd expect the jist of the decision to read basically "Hey dumbasses! We already said you can't do this. Knock the shit off!" Naturally, the language will be in legalese, but the theme will be there nonetheless.
It'll also be easy for the court to overturn the convictions for the cartoons and textual messages because the guy was also convicted for possessing "real CP" (and thus, will still be in prison). There's no motivation in this case to uphold the conviction on those counts in the name of "justice" when the other charges are sufficient to keep the creep locked up anyway.
If this case is heard, I'd expect the oral arguments to be very entertaining as the justices mercilessly grill the government attorneys on exactly how their arguments are different from what they already rejected a few years previously.
You're forgetting about lot's daughters seducing him. This was right after Sodom was destroyed for their evil ways and they thought they had to repopulate the earth.
Firearms didn't work for Randy Weaver, they didn't work for Gordon Khal, or the Freemen in Montana, or the Branch Dividians in Waco, or the Black Panthers, or for the Confederates, who were an actual army. Using guns on federal, state or local LEO's just seems to bring more LEO's with more guns and a greater desire to kill you.
And with the War on Drugs and the GWOT funneling military grade hardware and training into local police departments, local cops are as hopped up "to get the bad guys" as you are to stand up to "jackbooted government thugs". Smashing, yea capitalism.
cartoons are just cartoons man
You mean if Thelma had a nipple slip it'd go to the supreme court?
Straw man arguments are lies.
Is that you Seinfeld?
The question whether "victimless" (artificial) pornography is judged as criminal is only just beginning to become relevant.
There are several ways to look at that - the question of whether the spirit of the law tries to outlaw "child abuse" or "media that encourage or describe child abuse". On one hand, mere possession of these media is prosecuted (suggesting the latter) - on the other hand, Nabokov's Lolita is freely available. Right now, the distinction is easy: Lolita does not really exist, the abuse victims do.
However, we can expect the distinction to become increasingly blurry with technological progress of virtual reality. Computers can already render faces that look human. In ten or twenty years, it will be a very real question where the burden of proof is to lie: Should the prosecution have to prove child abuse (as criminal law normally demands)? Or should owners or producers of such images have to prove it is an artificially rendered image (on the side of caution)? Or should the content, real or artificial, be banned completely because, well, "ew, you sicko"?
Don't get me wrong, freedom of expression is important. But so is the safety of children. This is not just some nanny-state legislature about whether the word "fuck" can be said in public.
South Park, season 8, episode 1.
Cartman walks butt naked across a stage with a small "thing" dangling under him. Was that child porn too?
Fuck this law system.
"Whorley also received digital photographs of actual children engaging in sexual conduct and sent and received e-mails graphically describing parents sexually molesting their children."
Ave Molech Setting
If we take all these images away from the few who desire them, won't they then be forced to seek out real children?
We are harming our children more by making them grow up in a culture of fear, making them mistrustful of everyone around them, and encouraging them to believe they will likely be molested if we don't apply constant vigilance, than we would by letting a few cartoons run loose on the net.
I put on my wizard hat.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Movies that depict rape as part of the plot will soon be outlawed in Virginia (I'm thinking Boys Don't Cry, not porn).
If we don't protect the freedom of speech how will we know who the assholes are?
Was there a conviction of hustler magazine for child pornography for that one cartoon depicting a fat older man and an obviously young teen? I forget the name of the cartoon,i gave up looking at skin mags years ago but i think i rememeber there being a trial on this subject long ago.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Lucky for Nabokov he's dead, or he'd be jailed for writing Lolita...
And Shakespeare, don't forget Juliet (as in Romeo and Juliet) is thirteen.
Would I view or appreciate cartoon child porn? No.
Do I think drawing, viewing, or posessing such material is in extremely poor taste and very much ill-advised? You bet I do.
Do I think such material constitutes the same offense as actual child porn and those drawing or posessing it should be prosecuted as such? Absolutely NOT. Apples and oranges.
If we take the premises that child porn is terrible, and simulated child porn is nasty but probably only as bad as other gross but legal fetish porn, how about this:
Make porn depicting simulated children legal as long as it was plausibly created using widely available (or provably available to the defendant) technology. Won't the child abusers just run a photoshop filter over their porn, you say? That might happen, but if the result must be of a quality that could plausibly have been faked it should be much cheaper to just fake it in the first place. Child abusers should be driven out of business by money-grubbing porn kings. For the porn creators it would be easy to defend against legal charges by simply creating a new item of comparable quality. Of course it would only stop the for-profit abuse of children, but since that's the big problem with child pornography trading I think it would be a winning solution.
As an aside, is what I describe above the situation with rape porn? It's not my kind of thing, but I assume it's much cheaper to pay a porn actress to pretend to be raped than to actually commit a crime, videotape it, distribute the video and hope you don't go to jail.
.evom ton seod gis eht
Lucky for Nabokov he's dead, or he'd be jailed for writing Lolita...
We will now be dispatching officers to you , to swiftly arrest you for reading Lolita.
... or Edvard Munch for painting the picture "Puberty".
First of all I was responding to another poster who was talking about how Child Porn laws are just hysteria and not sensible. I wasn't responding to the original article, this was a separate sub-discussion. IF you had actually read the post I was responding to, you would have seen that. What was that about reading comprehension?
Slashdot's rendering glitches are not my fault, nor my responsibility. Oh, and quite a few of the "OMG protect the children!" kneejerk laws ARE hysteria, and quite a few of them end up putting children in the courtroom as defendants.
(semi-related anecdote: A friend of mine was sent to juvie hall when he was 13 for sleeping with a 15 year old girl - no effect for her. She was older, she led him on, she explicitly invited the act itself; he went to "kid jail" for the statutory rape of a girl two years his senior. Hooray for capitalism - I mean, the justice system.)
Secondly, the guy in question was convicted on OBSCENITY charges, NOT on Child Porn charges, even though the judge in the case spoke about the PROTECT act in his sentencing. I think you mentioned something about READING THE ARTICLE in your post?
No, he was busted for kiddie porn.
From the article:
Judge Paul V. Niemeyer noted in the majority opinion that the statute under which Whorley was convicted, the PROTECT Act of 2003, clearly states that "it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists."
Also, from the wiki entry describing the PROTECT act (the first link in the summary, supposedly to an entry about Dwight Whorley):
The first conviction of a person found to have violated the sections of the act relating to virtual child pornography, Dwight Whorley of Virginia, was upheld in a 2-1 panel decision of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2008.
So, what they said was that cartoon sex acts can be considered child pornography. Your entire confused and misguided rant is hereby refuted, and your lack of reading comprehension is shown to the (slashdot) world. Again. Have a nice day.
Look, if you want to Troll someone, At least have the intelligence to do it properly.
I'm not a troll, merely someone who points out (and by doing so, attempts to correct) ignorance and/or misinformation. Sorry you got your panties in a bunch, hope you read with more comprehension next time. I wasn't aware that I was trolling, but if I was, I think I've done it "properly" - I've certainly got your knickers in a twist, and to top it off, it appears the facts support my statements... Which of us is unintelligent, again?
I'd also like to point out that I wasn't really disagreeing with anything except the comment you made stating that the LEOs weren't busting people for cartoon porn, since they quite obviously are doing exactly that, and as a matter of fact that's what the article we're discussing is about.
Oh, and fuck you. Asshole.
Good job! That's how you win at intarweb fights! Ad hominem attacks! Gee, why didn't I think of that? Maybe next time I'll close my post by insulting your mother, instead of sticking to the facts of the discussion at hand... On second thought, I think I'll stick to logical and factual discussion and refutation of obvious falsehoods, but thanks for the invite to the chop-fights.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
I shouldn't be prevented by the State from killing people, like you, that I disagree with. Or annoy me whilst I'm driving. Or take too long paying when I'm in the queue behind them. Or look funny at me. Or if I'm simply having a bad day.
It's about time out-moded Christian morality, that prevents me from torturing people like you for an exptended period of time and then murdering you, stopped influencing our laws.
The real problem is that too many people, and I expect this includes you, are too stupid to get my point.
Personally I think every country should be run as a Meritocracy. Only the higher-rate tax payers, ie people like me, who make a nett contribution to the country should be allowed the vote.
I'd be prepared to consider allowing basic rate tax payers (i.e. the poor) the vote if they had a degree in a useful subject (eg not Social Science nor Drama nor Political Science nor Marketing nor any other non-subject).
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I've come to the conclusion lately that a significant portion of the population is just crazy (or rather, completely fascist and oppressive idiots is a better description. Crazy suffices most of the time though).
I'll offer the word unthinking. I'd describe thought as the process by which we question our instinct (genetics + conditioning) and social structures (including laws) that have evolved over the great span of time and decide if they are still beneficial. And these people aren't using it.
In Germany it's illegal to draw or have a drawing of a swastika. It's also illegal to deny the holocaust and I think it's even illegal to advance a view against any kind of minority, especially against other races; racism.
The reason is rather simple. It violates the basic rule the entire German law is based upon:
You have the right to do everything as long as you don't violate somebody else's right while doing it.
I think it's the same in most western countries including the USA.
The argumentation in this case would be:
Childs have the right to be protected and thus any material that could be used to develop an "ill will" to harm children, can be banned/made illegal. Now, what most people here would want is an irrefutable proof that this is the case with 'underage cartoon porn' while in reality the fear of the majority of concerned parents is often already good enough, especially when dealing with something that only very few people understand or even remotely comprehend.
You can compare this best with homosexual rights, where it's unlikely more difficult to prove that their behaviour harms the rights of anyone else.
The totally irrational fear in the majority of people is adequate enough to cut those rights as their right to feel safe is more important (as decided by the heterosexual majority, of course.)
Either there is such a thing as a thoughtcrime, or there isn't. And if there IS such a thing as thoughtcrime, surely it extends beyond child porn. The actual number of victims of sex offenders dwarfs in comparison to the sheer magnitude of harm committed by racists and other hate groups.
But why stop there? After all, if you're anti-abortion, then abortion advocates promote an idea that kills people by the thousands (tens of thousands?) every year. And if you're pro-abortion, then abortion opponents cause untold harm by forcing people to have huge numbers of unwanted children, which demonstrably has negative effects on society.
Where does it stop? I say at the very beginning. There is no such thing as a thoughtcrime.
(Note: I am not arguing in favor of real child porn; that isn't thoughtcrime at all, since it's based on real-world acts with horrifying consequences.)
You said:
Reason, which is the only mechanism through which we ever make progress...
Music, drama, storytelling, paintings, sculpture, dance, video games, comics, movies, child rearing,...
Nope, no progress coming from those. I guess you must be right - reason is the only mechanism.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
And Shakespeare, don't forget Juliet (as in Romeo and Juliet) is thirteen.
But her parents were trying to marry her off, so 13 was probably around the age of marriage (and therefore age of consent) in that time period. So going by that logic, anything written in a society where kids have sex young should be fine.
open source modern art: laser taggi
Yes Judge - I do get my girlfriend to dress up as a schoolgirl!
Or more exactly: how is the age of a minor who does not exist determined?
And how does this protect any real children? And if, indeed, it does somehow protect children, why is the depiction of drug abuse, murder, torture, and other nastiness against adults and/or children perfectly legal?
While speaking of it: is the depiction of slapping, beating, killing, torturing or otherwise non-sexually harming children in cartoons illegal too? If no, why not?
Finally: does this law also apply to underage furries, underage werewolves and underage aliens?
This basically boils down to thought crimes. Enjoy.
I live in Skenektady, you insensitive clod!
I am interested in the virtual aspect of this all.
If a drawing of an illegal act contains a victim and thus be illegal, it must also contain a culprit must it not?
Is that depicted "person" responsible?
Is the artist?
Or is the audience?
Can't we say you may draw it, but not look at it?
That should fix it all without fiddling around with freedom of speech or expression etc.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/simpsons-cartoon-ripoff-is-child-porn-judge/2008/12/08/1228584707575.html
someone is already in trouble here in australia for this
Repeal the 17th Amendment!
I think this is a clear case here of politicians making policies, without thinking of the long-term consequences. Or if they are, then it's either a case of short-term point-scoring, masochism, or long-term power grabs.
The idea of prosecuting people for possession of actual child porn, which has already happened, is dubious. It rests on the ideas that possession is a form of encouragement to do likewise, and that there is an underlying monetary benefit for the producer of such images.
But unlike a "war on drugs", a "war on child porn" depends heavily on the context of the situation. An image may meet the definition of child porn, but if no-one is harmed in the process, has an actual crime been commited?
It's dangerous to assume the intent of those producing porn imagery, or those who receive it, as it leads to the slippery-slope of thought-crime. If thought-crime were real, then we can all be convicted in some shape or form. The distinctions of what's legal or not become meaningless, and abuses of power come soon after.
In the age of the internet, preventing distribution of anything is practically impossible, unless extreme measures are taken. To fight your enemy, you have to know them. And that means finding out why they abuse children in the first place. To do anything else is to pretend. And perhaps, by telling everyone else what to think and do, is a form of abuse in itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg
be careful what you wish for...
What would happen if there were images of Chewbacca having sex with an Ewok? Is that porn? Can a person who is 19 be convicted of possessing child porn if they took certain photos of themselves when they were under 18 and they still have the photos in their possession?
Amen. Amen. Amen.
There are two horrendous memes going around right now that scare me to death:
1. The Government is allowed to do it unless the Constitution says it can't.
As you rightfully point out, this is exactly backward. The Government can't do it until the Constitution says it can. You would think a bunch of geeks would appreciate the power of a "default" setting...
2. The Constitution says the Government can't do that. The Constitution doesn't restrict Corporations from doing that. Therefore, if the Government works through Corporations to do it, it's OK.
I worry about these two wrong-headed ideas, because I've seen one other one rise to power in my life. When Carl Icahn and T. Boone Pickens started chanting in the late '70s, "A Corporation's only obligation is to maximize shareholder value," they were laughed out of the room. I even remember an interview with a Wharton business prof deriding the idea. Of course Corporations have obligations to the community and societies they operate in -- it was the explicit deal spelled out in their corporate charters. The Citizens of the State grant the Corporation limited liability, legal personhood and tax breaks. In return for these favors, Corporations promise to contribute to the General Welfare.
That was the theory, at any rate. At least everyone understood how the game was SUPPOSED to be played, even if the real world never did quite measure up...
Unfortunately, after 30 years of the Big Lie, I talk to kids in college these days who honestly believe, "A Corporation should maximize shareholder value without consideration of morality or the impact on the society at large."
I always ask these kids, "OK, why exactly do we offer Corporations limited liability, the legal fiction of personhood, and lesser tax burdens?"
Mostly they answer, "Just because we do." Some of the more clever ones come up with "To encourage investment in Corporations." When I ask why we should care, they fumble for a bit and mention something about jobs. I point out that proportinately, most jobs in America are now created by the sole proprietorships and partnerships of small businesses. If we're trading no liability and tax breaks in return for jobs, we're getting screwed on the deal.
Ultimately, they shrug their shoulders and say, "I don't know, that's just what I was always told."
It's bad enough my children have to live in a world where everyone thinks businesses have no obligations but to make money. I shudder to think that my grandkids might live in a world where everyone thinks the government can rightfully do whatever it wants.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Some Western countries today (not sure if that covers the US) punish statutory rape / child abuse, as defined by their own laws, even if it happens outside the country, and even if the act itself was legal in the jurisdiction where it was committed. Logically extending it to apply to the works of fiction, "it was legal in the society this book described" should not be a valid defense.
In Germany Penal Code, under section 86, it's illegal to display the swastika publicly in some places and for propaganda purposes. It's not illegal to possess nor draw depending on intent. Intent is key here, like it is with many laws in America. Unlike what ebay said (going overboard, like they always do), items from back then is okay for collecting and/or teaching purposes.
Also, Germany, by doing the exact same thing it did 63+ years ago, but just on the other political extreme means it didn't learn its lesson fully. You don't protect democracy by restricting freedom and worshipping the state as always when it changes its tune. You get it by giving people freedoms and protecting individuals', not collective, rights.
Denying the holocaust on an individual level does not infringe or trample on anybody's rights, it just makes you an idiot and everybody should have the freedom to be an idiot if it's at a harmless level. Just because the legislated thoughtcrime 63+ years ago is different than the thoughtcrimes of today, it does not make it any better.
Fuck the state worshipping mentality where ever it springs up.
Liar.
Some Western countries today (not sure if that covers the US) punish statutory rape / child abuse, as defined by their own laws, even if it happens outside the country, and even if the act itself was legal in the jurisdiction where it was committed.
The US does that too, if it's a US citizen, in order to discourage pedo-tourism. As the fictional chars aren't US citizens, the logical extension doesn't fly.
open source modern art: laser taggi
The US does that only if the victim is a US citizen, or it is sufficient if the perpetrator is a US citizen? Germany, for example, does the latter.
In which case the citizenship of fictional chars is irrelevant, so long as the viewer is a citizen...
http://www.rageagainsttheright.com/supreme-court.jpg
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Haven't you heard? These laws aren't about protecting children anymore.
They're about protecting political careers.
Anyone who says otherwise is a politician or scared of seeming "different" than the sheep around them.
Just the perp and you're right. I was confusing the legality of in world acts with the observer of the acts, but that's a whole other debate.
open source modern art: laser taggi
Things like this make me want to start drawing really poorly done kiddy porn, just to prove that I am still free. (for the record, i am not a pedo and abhor child molestors and pornographers)
This was originally written in response to a similar ruling in Australia, but Slate's William Saletan had much the same idea:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/archive/2008/12/16/is-this-child-pornography.aspx
Does the West past your free speech test now?
I'm going to start drawing lines on a page... tell me which line makes it illegal. The outline? Shading? Coloring?
There's a reason that sounds stupid... because this whole damn topic is stupid. ffs I like to watch violent movies, and I don't kill people... I like to play racing games, and I've never had a speeding ticket... is it some how different when there's sex involved? Is reading some stupid porn story going to suddenly make you exactly like the story talks about?
Of course this is going to be a mess... we can't even get these idiots to accept that playing a video game won't make you the next baby-killing monster. I think these people protest a bit too much...
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Never mind reading. What if I order "Lolita" from Netflix? There are two versions available....
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Authorities are seeking Mr. T. Monster in connection with several area rapes. "Right now, Mr. Monster is considered a 'person of interest' in the case, and we simply want to ask him a few questions" said the department's spokesman, Deputy Dawg.
In this case any sex regarding Dwight should be deemed illegal sex with a mutant... Ewwwww...
See: gods, religion, afterlife, etc. (which by their very nature are the most important things for believers)
Why applying the same rules to cartoons seems suddenly to irk people so much?... (well, except muslims)
One that hath name thou can not otter
get out in the streets and protest ... those poor cartoons mistreated omg ... personally i think it's okay if its meant to be satyrical, if its meant to provoke arousel it is still kidporn imo and therefore the author's head should be checked
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
This decision is bad especially concerning Japanese Anime. There are quite a few people who would stop at nothing to ban Japanese Anime here in the United States. A lot of those people are corporate executives who don't want anything to get in the way of our work culture which is defined as you work during your awake hours and the only other activities is sleep, shower, eat and go to the bathroom. Gov't officials are like corporate executives. The both have similar attitudes of live to work, not work to live.
If posession of naked cartoon children is a crime, then anyone who ever bought a newspaper that ran "Love Is..." is in big trouble.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Is.../
One of the persistent frustrations of a pro-life voter such as myself is that the Republican Right will spare no expense prosecuting CP laws, and yet, in spite of their supposed pro-life stance, allow abortion to continue unabated, because in the words of our esteemed President, "America is not ready..."
There's an interesting inversion of moral priorities when killing unborn children is considered a right, but the mere depiction of children in sex acts is an offense punishable by (effectively) life in prison.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
But now add a sketch artist into the mix to document this and he is gonna get locked up!
I'm not sure even I'M quite that cynical. :) While situations like the above could happen, the more realistic outcome, provided you're otherwise clean, is that you defend yourself by pointing out that you had every reason to believe she was of age ...
Only in some Model Penal Code states. Traditionally, statutory rape is strict liability with respect to the age element. Since there is no mental state requirement there, mistake of fact is no defense in common law jurisdictions.
The MPC erases this distinction but leaves rape screwed up in other ways (like only being when a man rapes a woman or putting an age limit at 10 instead of 16 or 18). States that adopt the MPC haven't followed it strictly, but I think some have eliminated the strict liability on the age. Others have not and have explicitly made age strict liability still.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
But, lo and behold, in the late 1990s, it gained new attention. Die Blechtrommel, imdb
As an aside, the actor, David Bennent, grew slowly himself. I was suprised to learn that he was 19 when he appeared in an episode of the Derrick series. He looked more like a prepubescent 13 year old, and still had a child's voice. But his character was (again) supposed to be older than he looked.
Now, if he had enacted something erotic then, would it only be kiddie porn if...
I sense that the prevailing attitude is "someone got confused, let's ban it!"
It's a cute example, but it fails all three prongs of the Miller test for obscenity.
1) It's not intended to "appeal to the prurient interest." (To put it crudely, no one's fapping to that one without a lot of imagination to fill in the blanks.)
2) It doesn't explicitly describe sex in a "patently offensive" way. (Saying two kids had sex is different from describing the act itself.)
3) The work does not lack "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." (Religious texts would be considered to meet the first three of four.)
In other words, as anyone with any common freaking sense should know, there's a whole lot of difference between the Bible and lolicon porn.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Heck, Nabokov wrote Lolita over 50 years ago. Does that mean that fans of "lolita" erotica are now into "mature" women? No, because the titular character remains perenially twelve.
So what happens when the ages of the character are all screwed up due to various fictional devices?
Anime is filled with characters who are younger or older than they look. If you have a girl from a race of nigh-immortals that looks and acts like she's underage but is actually hundreds of years old, then is that child porn? (e.g. Vampire Princess Miyu.) What if you have an adult mind possessing an underage body? (e.g. Dante from Full Metal Alchemist.) What if you have a character who is a little girl who can transform into an older, mature body? (e.g. Full Moon wo Sagashite)
What if you have all three in the same character? (e.g. Sasami from Tenchi Muyo.)
I mean, let's face it. Most hentai is going to be about teenagers under American legal limits (since most anime series feature teenage protagonists), but what would a court do with characters of such indeterminate age? Even going with just appearance can't work because of overstacked fanservice teens. (Even worse, what do you do when one artist draws a girl more underage or more mature than the original artist does?)
So, what, do we insist on anything that *might* be construed as underage porn under *some* theory, or do we go with a dominant theory? I think it's a huge mess, myself.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Becaauuuuse, it's bad precedent. Suppose someone has raped, tortured, and murdered over a thousand children. He get charged for those crimes, and in addition gets 20 years in prison for driving 62 on a 60 mph road. You may say 'who cares such a conviction is ridiculous, the guy deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his life', but it sets bad precedent for all of us, not just the 'villains'.
Well, yours is an extreme example, but this is incredibly common in the law. Think of rape. Bad enough on its own, right? But if two people separately rape a woman, they are just guilty of rape. In some states, if they together rape the same woman, they are guilty of aggravated rape. Same with possession of an unlicensed firearm. Illegal enough, but if you're carrying an unlicensed firearm while committing a robbery, you've committed aggravated robbery in some jurisdictions. Doesn't matter if if you did the same damage you would've done with your fists or another nondeadly weapon in the course of the robbery. We think the harm is sufficient to justify a higher crime.
Even when there isn't a separate crime for doing two things at once, there often are sentencing guidelines that set certain minimums based on overall bad behavior. For example, federal sentencing guidelines mandate higher sentences if you're carrying drugs on you at the time, with worse sentences for more drugs.
So with that background, why not punish people having actual child porn more heavily than those having fictional child porn alone? It seems to be very strong evidence that the person is far more dangerous and has committed a greater social harm than someone who has only fictional porn.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The point at which the individual is biologically ready to reproduce.
Physiologically (e.g. safely with some minimum pelvis size)? Mentally (e.g. with some minimum of brain development or some test of maturity and responsibility)?
If the first, then by what threshold? What marginal rate of miscarriage would be acceptable? What physical complications are acceptable? Does the ability to deliver by C-section lower the age?
What about for boys? As soon as one is capable of ejaculation or merely erection?
Is your standard one that completely disregards the mental and emotional damages caused by underage sex, or do we only care about body damages and breedability? What does "capable of reproduction" even mean to you?
I should have been more clear. The rape criteria for minors above the age of consent would be the same as the rape criteria for adults. Sex with persons below the age of consent is still statutory rape.
i.e. No actual change to present day laws. That's the way it works already.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
A huge crushing effect on art and literature is taking place with these idiotic prosecutions.
Dude. He's buying lolicon doujins, not Nabokov. This isn't art and literature -- it's porn.
Usually the drawings do not depict children at all. This applies to Japanese cartoon characters in particular as line drawings of cartoon characters never have genital hair as it is a cultural taboo in Japan.
Well, two problem here. In fact, most anime characters are teens under 18. Age of consent in Japan is 14, which lets them get away with having high schoolers in sexual situations. Anime protagonists that are of age in America are frankly the minority, weird censorship laws on pubic hair aside.
The second problem is that this was lolicon. It was in fact entirely about very underage children having sex, so really you're just flat out wrong with respect to this case.
Now museums and others must live in terror that a significant artists works just might be seen by some idiot as child pornography and there is a great chilling effect upon legitimate art and artists.
Oh, just read up on Miller and shut up with the hysterics.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If it is a cartoon, or drawing, or created image than there is no crime in my opinion - because there is no victimization.
Neither do most DUI offenses. Should we decriminalize DUI unless an accident happens?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
/thread
Dude. He's buying lolicon doujins, not Nabokov. This isn't art and literature -- it's porn.
So the age old debate of how to tell art from porn has been solved? Of course not (and the terms are not mutually exclusive).
Well, two problem here. In fact, most anime characters are teens under 18. Age of consent in Japan is 14, which lets them get away with having high schoolers in sexual situations. Anime protagonists that are of age in America are frankly the minority, weird censorship laws on pubic hair aside.
What, did you check their birth certificates? How exactly do you claim to know the ages of fictional images?
Oh, just read up on Miller and shut up with the hysterics.
"Shut up, shut up" - that's all you censorship people know, isn't it? Why don't you shut up - I don't see any artistic or literary merit in what you post, so let's say no more posts from you, or else you get to spend time in prison.
Of course, it's probably true that images in museums wouldn't be affected, but then it's even more ridiculous if the same images become illegal when found on somebody's hard drive. A selectively enforced law is a bad law. And don't think that laws are never used in stupid ways - from images in art galleries, to 30 year old album covers on online encyclopedias.
The only hysterics here are from people who think cartoons are anything to with child porn.
So the age old debate of how to tell art from porn has been solved? Of course not (and the terms are not mutually exclusive).
If this was on the borderline, I'd say you have a point, but chances are really good that these doujins aren't. The more extreme the fetish, the less likely a solid story or any artistic merit is involved. At any rate, unlike us, the court has actually had a chance to review the materials and has found them to be obscene. And unlike you the court knows what the legal standard for that is, which is very strict with regards to how little can be banned.
According to the decision, the doujins depicted children being raped and sodomized by adults. I very seriously doubt that this was handled in any "literary" fashion. Ultimately, it's up to the jury to decide, and the jury was presented with the full Miller standard. So why are you, an internet poster unfamiliar with the law, wiser than an entire 12 person jury?
What, did you check their birth certificates? How exactly do you claim to know the ages of fictional images?
...Seriously? Are you really that stupid?
How do you know what age the characters are? Oh, I don't know. Maybe there's a bio that tells the images. Maybe they're all in high school (or elementary school) and there's no indication that they've all been held back. Maybe it's just bleeding obvious to anyone reading the material because the entire target fetish is grossly underage girls. Lolicon as a genre doesn't involve teenagers of questionable age -- it involves children, and fans disdain mature looking women or older girls.
Again, you're pretending that all of porn is some bordercase case and can never be sensibly regulated. Lolicon isn't a borderline case at all.
"Shut up, shut up" - that's all you censorship people know, isn't it? Why don't you shut up - I don't see any artistic or literary merit in what you post, so let's say no more posts from you, or else you get to spend time in prison.
*sigh* I see that you're very tenacious in your ignorance of the law. I would like you to quit spreading FUD as a result of your gross ignorance and/or grow more informed about what the law actually is. For example, see Miller v. California, New York v. Ferber, and Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. Could you please do that? Until then, you're just making an ass of yourself.
Better yet, read the decision.
Of course, it's probably true that images in museums wouldn't be affected, but then it's even more ridiculous if the same images become illegal when found on somebody's hard drive. A selectively enforced law is a bad law. And don't think that laws are never used in stupid ways - from images in art galleries, to 30 year old album covers on online encyclopedias.
Look, you very obviously do not understand the law. "Artistic merit" does not go away just because a piece exhibited in a museum is photographed and stored on a computer. I love how many geeks on this site get all up in arms, flailing about and screaming about the death of all civil liberties because they apparently believe that no one with a law degree has any common sense remaining in their heads.
Most of the law is based on clear, common sense definitions. Laws themselves might not be wise, but the people forced to apply them aren't lobotomized twits following some mechanical script. When a "bad case" comes up, generally the reporting on it misses the legal reasoning, misses the background of the case, misses the judge's own opinion of the state of the law (with many judges giving extremely strong hints that the legislature needs to fix a bad law), etc.
If you read the case, you'll find the argument here in Section V, starting on pp. 13. Whorley attempted to argue that the statute was unconstitu
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Not your point, but.... Although Lolita was described in detail, but not enough to be arousing to most, and they are spread through out the book. The protaganist himself said that the reader can image the sex because he wasn't going to describe it. Their is nothing fap worthy in the book other than shit a pedo will fantasize about anyway.
However, an author who would be jailed however is Piers Anthony. In Firefly their was a pretty explicit scene about a man having sex with a five year old. That was the most erotic scene depicing pedophilia in any book I have read (downloaded of course because I would clearly be jailed for reading it with these stupid laws).
[Disclamer: I'm a pedo and search these things out and read them, most would never see them.)
Car Analogy
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Ray,
As a sane lawyer (or one depicted that way), would you please comment on this article?
Thank you.